How to Target Gulf NRIs With Facebook and Instagram Ads

Full disclosure: running Gulf NRI campaigns for Kerala businesses is part of what we do as a Calicut-based digital marketing team working across Kerala. This guide sets out the approach we'd use, with Meta's own documentation and government migration data behind each step, so you can run it yourself or judge whoever runs it for you.

It covers who the Gulf NRIs are and where they live, the Meta targeting options that still work in 2026, timing, creative, where the click should go, short notes for property, education, jewellery and healthcare, and how to measure the result. Taken together, it is an NRI marketing plan for Facebook and Instagram that a Kerala business can start this month.

Who are the Gulf NRIs, and where do they live?#

Most of India's non-resident Indians live in the Gulf. The Ministry of External Affairs counts about 99 lakh NRIs in the six GCC countries↗ (opens in a new tab) out of 1.78 crore worldwide (data as of January 2026, read 4 October 2026): 43.26 lakh in the UAE, 27.48 lakh in Saudi Arabia, 10.36 lakh in Kuwait, 8.30 lakh in Qatar, 6.77 lakh in Oman and 3.15 lakh in Bahrain.

For Kerala, the Gulf matters even more. The Kerala Migration Survey 2023↗ (opens in a new tab), run by the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation with IIMAD for the state's NORKA department (GIFT's copy of the report, July 2024), estimates 2.2 million emigrants from Kerala, 80.5% of them in the GCC. That share was 89.2% in 2018, and the survey suggests students explain much of the fall: their number doubled to about 2.5 lakh, and they prefer countries outside the Gulf.

The money follows the people. The same survey puts remittances to Kerala at ₹2,16,893 crore in 2023, up from ₹85,092 crore in 2018. The Reserve Bank of India's sixth remittances survey↗ (opens in a new tab) (RBI Bulletin, 19 March 2025) gives Kerala 19.7% of all inward remittances to India in 2023-24, second only to Maharashtra, and the GCC countries 38% of India's remittances by source.

One detail changes budgets: Kerala's Gulf map is not India's. Kuwait has more Indian NRIs than Qatar, but more of Kerala's emigrants live in Qatar (9.1%) than in Kuwait (5.8%). Split spend by where your buyers' families actually are.

NRIs: MEA↗ (opens in a new tab). Kerala shares: KMS 2023, table of emigrants by country. UAE weekend: the UAE government portal's working hours page↗ (opens in a new tab) (updated 12 August 2026; Sharjah's government also takes Friday off). Other weekends: The National, 7 December 2021↗ (opens in a new tab). Clocks: the UAE and Oman are on GMT+4 and the other four on GMT+3 (The National↗ (opens in a new tab), updated 26 March 2023); India is on GMT+5:30. All read 4 October 2026.

Which Meta targeting options still work in 2026?#

Fewer than there used to be. Meta's wider 2026 changes are covered in our guide to what changed in Meta ads this year; these are the settings that decide whether an NRI campaign reaches the right people.

Location: living in or recently in, combined. Meta's developer documentation on basic targeting↗ (opens in a new tab) (read 4 October 2026) says plainly that "the array ['home', 'recent'] is the only option available". You can't pick "people living in the UAE" separately from people recently there. Two consequences follow. A UAE ad set also reaches recent visitors. And when Gulf families fly home in the summer, a Kerala-targeted campaign can reach them too, because their recent location is now Kerala. Countries, regions and cities (with a radius of 17 to 80 km) can all be targeted or excluded.

Language: the language the app is set to. Meta's advanced targeting documentation↗ (opens in a new tab) describes language targeting as reaching accounts "with language other than common language for a location", which is exactly the Malayalam-in-Dubai case. But it picks people by their account's language setting, not the language they speak at home. A Malayali who uses Instagram in English is outside a Malayalam-only audience, so run Malayalam as a test against an all-languages ad set rather than as your only filter.

Advantage+ audience: controls and suggestions. Under Meta's Advantage+ audience↗ (opens in a new tab), minimum age, location, language and custom audience exclusions are strict controls Meta will not go beyond. Interests, age ranges, gender, custom audiences and lookalikes are suggestions it may expand past "when it's likely to improve performance". For NRI campaigns that is mostly good news: the country and language you set hold, and the rest is a hint.

No targeting by ethnicity or religion. Meta removed detailed targeting options↗ (opens in a new tab) that relate to "health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation", announced in November 2021 and effective from 19 January 2022. Meta offers no option for community or ethnic background, so creative has to do much of the selecting. Detailed targeting exclusions went too, in a change Meta announced on 21 January 2025↗ (opens in a new tab); excluding a custom audience, such as existing customers, still works.

Expat behaviours: check before you count on them. Some marketing guides point to an expat behaviour in detailed targeting for people who used to live in India, often shown as "Lived in India". Meta's public targeting documentation doesn't describe it, and detailed targeting options come and go, so check whether Ads Manager offers it to your account before you plan around it. If it is there, Advantage+ audience treats it as a suggestion, not a hard filter, so the location and language settings above still do the real work.

Your own audiences. Website visitors, people who engaged with your Instagram or Facebook page, video viewers and customer lists all work as suggestions, and lists of people who agreed to hear from you can be excluded or used to seed lookalikes. Consent matters here: our DPDP checklist for lead and CRM data covers what India's data law asks before a customer list goes to an ad platform.

Special ad categories stop at the Gulf. Meta's documentation on special ad categories↗ (opens in a new tab) lists targeting restrictions for housing, employment and financial products ads in the United States, Canada and Europe, not in India or the GCC (read 4 October 2026). If a property or NRI loan campaign extends to NRIs in those countries, expect fixed age ranges, no gender targeting and no lookalikes there.

A simple structure for a Kerala business selling to Gulf NRIs:

When should ads run?#

Gulf evenings and weekends, with the season in mind. That is the playbook on our real estate page, with separate campaigns for Malayalis in all six GCC countries scheduled for Gulf evenings and weekends, and our education page times its campaigns for Gulf parents the same way.

• Schedule in the viewer's time zone. The ad set schedule↗ (opens in a new tab) in Meta's Marketing API defaults to the viewer's own time zone (read 4 October 2026), so one evening schedule runs at evening time in Riyadh and in Dubai alike.
• Saturday is the shared weekend day. Friday is a weekend day in five of the six countries; in the UAE, the federal government works Friday mornings and rests on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is a weekend day in all six.
• Someone in Kerala stays up. At 9 pm in Dubai it is 10:30 pm in Kerala, and at 9 pm in Riyadh it is 11:30 pm. Budget for a late shift or an honest auto-reply, not an unanswered chat.
• Spend before the trips home. Our Kerala and real estate pages weight Gulf campaigns towards the months families fly home, the summer school holidays and December, and push hardest just before them, when families book visits.
• Plan Ramadan separately. Astronomical calculations put the start of Ramadan 2027 on Monday 8 February, subject to moon sighting (Gulf News↗ (opens in a new tab), 1 September 2026); our Ramadan guide covers how viewing moves late into the night across the Gulf.

What creative works for NRI families?#

Creative that sounds like home and answers the questions distance creates. Because Meta no longer selects by community, the hook does the selecting: a Malayalam line or a Kerala place name in the first second tells the right viewer the ad is for them, and everyone else scrolls on.

For Big Deals Realtors, a property consultancy in Calicut, we ran an Instagram feed with Malayalam hooks alongside English posts for NRI and Gulf audiences, plus promotion for events such as a Dubai property show in Kannur. That show is the corridor running the other way: Big Deals also sells Dubai property to buyers in Kerala.

A creative checklist for NRI campaigns:

That last row is arithmetic, not taste: as our guide to Gulf short-form video shows, the same budget over a small audience means each person sees the ad more often, and results fade sooner.

Where should the click go?#

Into a WhatsApp chat with someone awake. Our click-to-WhatsApp guide covers the set-up, Meta's free entry window and the first five minutes after a chat opens; three habits matter most for NRIs.

1. Pre-fill the country. A first message such as "Hi, I'm in Doha and interested in the 2BHK" tells your team which clock and which questions apply before anyone replies.
2. Ask when they're next in Kerala. For a Gulf family, the trip home is often the decision point, so the date of the next visit is the most useful field in the CRM.
3. Offer a video tour or call. Families who can't drop in want to see the site, the classroom or the collection, and to see who they're dealing with.

If you send clicks to a page instead, make it load fast on a phone and repeat the ad's promise; our landing page checklist covers both.

How do sector campaigns differ?#

Property. Under the Reserve Bank's master direction on immovable property↗ (opens in a new tab) (updated 1 September 2022), an NRI can buy any property in India other than agricultural land, plantation property or a farmhouse, paying by inward remittance or from an NRE, FCNR(B) or NRO account. Our real estate page puts the practical questions in the creative: NRI home loans, power of attorney and rental management. What the videos should show, and the K-RERA details every property ad must carry, are in our guide to real estate video marketing.

Education. Our education page starts from a simple observation: many Kerala students' fees are paid by parents working in the Gulf. So the playbook runs parent-specific campaigns timed to Gulf evenings, with content on results, hostel safety and fees, alongside online or vacation batches for Gulf-based students preparing for entrance exams. Our admissions marketing guide has the calendar.

Jewellery. Our jewellery playbook times bridal campaigns for Malayali families in the Gulf to their home-leave months and to Gulf evenings, and routes chats to staff who can walk a family through designs on a video call. The seasons are in our wedding season marketing guide.

Healthcare. Some Gulf Malayalis plan treatment for their trips home, and our healthcare playbook includes campaigns for them. Those campaigns still fall under India's medical advertising rules, so keep them informative, with no testimonials or promises of outcomes; our clinic marketing guide covers what the rules allow.

How do you measure an NRI campaign?#

By country, and over months rather than days.

• Keep countries apart. Separate ad sets give you spend and cost per lead by country without guesswork, and show whether Qatar's Keralites respond better than Kuwait's.
• Record the country and the trip in the CRM. The dialling code on the WhatsApp number gives the country; add the source campaign and the date of the next visit home. For NRI campaigns, we keep this record in a CRM on Xale, the CRM platform by Xale Private Limited (reported by our team), and Xale's platform page↗ (opens in a new tab) describes that platform.
• Judge on qualified conversations and visits. A chat that books a site visit or a counselling call for December is worth more than ten that stop at "price?". Report cost per qualified conversation and cost per visit booked, not cost per click.
• Allow for the lag. A lead from June may buy in December, on the trip home. Keep the original source on the record so the sale is credited to the right campaign months later.
• Send outcomes back to Meta. Telling Meta which leads became visits and sales helps it find more people like them; our guide to offline conversion tracking covers the set-up.

For the online tuition we market for Zealous Learning, a tuition brand for classes 5 to 12, the Kerala and Gulf campaigns ran as separate sets, which is what made the comparison possible. In Meta's count (13 Jun 2024 to 4 Oct 2026), the five Kerala campaigns brought 124 enquiries from families in Kerala at ₹249.63 each, and the six Gulf campaigns 18 from families in the Gulf at ₹810.37 each. Showing the ads 1,000 times cost about ₹125 in Kerala and ₹518 in the Gulf, by our arithmetic from Meta's figures. Eighteen enquiries is a small sample, and a Gulf enquiry is never assumed to be worth more: there's no fee or enrolment data to say so.

For a starting reference, our roundup of cost per lead benchmarks for India and the UAE shows how far published figures spread, and why your own CRM numbers should set the target. And if you're still deciding between platforms, our comparison of Meta and Google ads for Kerala businesses explains why Meta usually does the prospecting for NRI campaigns while Google catches people searching your name afterwards.

Frequently asked questions#

Can you target NRIs by nationality on Facebook?#

No. Meta removed detailed targeting options related to race and ethnicity, among other sensitive topics, from 19 January 2022. Target Gulf NRIs through location, the language their app is set to, your own audiences such as website visitors and engaged followers, and creative that speaks to them directly. Some guides mention an expat behaviour ("Lived in India"); Meta's public documentation doesn't describe it, so check in Ads Manager whether it is offered before relying on it.

Can a Kerala business target the Gulf from an Indian ad account?#

Yes. Location is set per ad set, by country, region or city, so one ad account can run Kerala and Gulf ad sets side by side. Keep them separate so each country's spend and results stay visible.

What time should ads run for NRIs in the Gulf?#

In the Gulf evening and at weekends. The UAE and Oman are 1 hour 30 minutes behind India, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain 2 hours 30 minutes behind, so 9 pm in Dubai is 10:30 pm in Kerala. Saturday is the one weekend day all six countries share.

Which Gulf country has the most people from Kerala?#

The UAE, home to 38.6% of Kerala's emigrants in the Kerala Migration Survey 2023, followed by Saudi Arabia (16.9%), Qatar (9.1%), Oman (6.4%), Kuwait (5.8%) and Bahrain (3.7%). In all, 80.5% of Kerala's emigrants lived in the GCC.

Should NRI ads be in Malayalam or English?#

Test both. Meta's language setting reaches people whose app is set to Malayalam, which leaves out Malayalis who use Instagram in English, so compare a Malayalam ad set with an all-languages one that runs Malayalam creative. The language in the video matters as much as the targeting setting.

Plan the campaign around the trip home#

Gulf NRI campaigns work when the targeting is simple, the creative does the selecting and someone answers at 11 pm Kerala time. If you want help setting up the countries, schedules and chat routing, tell us what you sell and to whom. You can also see how we run performance marketing across India and the GCC, and how we plan campaigns for all six Gulf markets.

Changelog#

• 2026-10-10: Big Deals Realtors is now named in full and links its case study; the advice is unchanged.
• 2026-10-11: Added Zealous Learning's online tuition campaigns as a measured example of keeping Kerala and the Gulf apart: 124 enquiries at ₹249.63 against 18 at ₹810.37 (Meta's count), and the cost of 1,000 impressions in each (our arithmetic), with the small Gulf sample flagged.